This post is part of a new summer 2017 “DIY” (do-it-yourself) series by House Divided Project interns Rachel Morgan and Sam Weisman on how to make various types of primary source facsimiles; see posts on CDVs, stereocards, colorized photos, and letters.

On a camping trip for the first time, a student in my mother’s fifth grade class exclaimed that he was surprised the great outdoors “wasn’t all black and white”. The student, raised on video games and smart phones, thought of nature as old-timey, flat. If the vibrant colors and sounds of nature seemed “black and white” to the student, how could the black and white photograph of a moment ever connect?

You take in a black and white photograph all at once. A captivating video by Vox explains how adding a little color helps a viewer relate to the details – familiar denim pants or a cherry red Cola. Among a collection of black and white photos, just one flash of color can help students think differently about the rest. Familiar scenes from the Civil War come to life in color.

A color photograph looks like a slice of reality to the viewer, but the artist knows better. The image is an interpretation of the past: art, not reproduction. Artists run into issues if they present an updated photo as authentic and fail to credit the original artist. Professional color artists debated how to present recolored images in this insightful piece. Students should be able to recognize that the new colors are not necessarily correct. If you are going to colorize Civil War era images, and especially if you post them online, make sure to clearly credit the original photograph and explain that you modified the new one. As always, make sure the image is credited for reuse. A “before and after” comparison proves very transparent, because the viewer can compare the artists work with the original. Being open about a colorized image does not make it less teachable. Students may look at black and white images differently if they imagine the alternative colors in the scene. See some good examples of how to present such work from the coverage by the Daily Mail and here from Time magazine in 2013 when new digital technologies helped make colorizing easier.

I learned how to colorize this summer and then made my first recolored photo in about an hour . With a few simple Photoshop tricks, vibrant color photos of history can be regular features in the classroom.

The quickest way to recolor a photo is essentially one of the oldest. In the 1890s, photographers tinted sections of their photo negatives and then layered them by color. The layer technique on Photoshop imitates this “photochrom” process for a quick and easy recolor. It is perfect for classroom use but only the tip of the iceberg in the art of recoloring.

I learned how to colorize photos from this tutorial by the Photoshop Video Academy:

Bear in mind – colorization works best with a large, high-res image. Color brings out detail, and this is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to old, maybe damaged images. The best parts of the photograph will be more vivid but so will the blurry or unclear elements. Even with a high quality image, it may be difficult to decide what color to use. Shadows and camera angles can obscure parts of a picture. Your impulse may be to zoom in very close to seamlessly select parts of the photo. This is essential, but make sure you regularly zoom out to get the big picture. Notice my subject’s left hand in the color image below. Up close, this seemed like a shadow but zooming out on the original image, I recognized fingers. Keep the original picture open in a different tab so you can flip back and forth.

From the Autobiography of Moncure Conway

I started off with this portrait. The background and lighting are simple. Also, the face and hands make up a relatively small part of the image. Human skin tones are very difficult to get right and are one of the more noticeable differences if you get them wrong. Textiles are much easier. From my experience, I find full-body images easier to recolor than facial details or group photographs.

Modified by Sam Weisman

Where possible, use historical records or period models for color inspiration. Expert color artists will obsessively research to find the right colors for their subjects’ clothes but for classroom purposes, imagination and an educated guess can still make for a convincing photograph. I had no reason to believe my subject’s shirt was red, for example. Google “Lincoln in color” to see how many different ways artists have interpreted the same portrait.

The blacks and whites in old photographs do not carry over well into color. In fact, they fall on the spectrum of gray. So, even if part of an image will remain white or black in the finished product, it should still be recolored. For example, I tinted my subject’s coat a very dark blue so the color was consistent with the richer tone of the new image.

Try to keep the colors muted. An overzealous recoloring job will stand out. Compare your work with other colorized photographs, or even modern photographs of period artifacts.

All of these details will “unflatten” a black and white photograph. Maybe a student will discover that old photos weren’t so flat to begin with. Or, like Dorothy opening her door into the land of Oz, color will reveal a new world.

This post is part of a new summer 2017 “DIY” (do-it-yourself) series by House Divided Project interns Rachel Morgan and Sam Weisman on how to make various types of primary source facsimiles; see posts on CDVs, stereocards, colorized photos, and letters.

Imagine holding the tear-stained letter from a loving wife to her husband, a Union soldier. Then, follow the soldier through news clippings to the bloody Battle of Antietam. Hold the wife’s letter in one hand and the soldier’s death notice in the other.

House Divided Project facsimile collection

When students leaf through facsimile documents, they connect with these emotional stories. The authentic feel of a replica letter adds an interactive, physical layer to the study of primary sources.

Within my first week as an intern at the House Divided project, I picked up some tricks to quickly reproduce primary source documents. A few key details can make a facsimile ready for classroom use with little time and effort.

Getting the Paper Right

Paper was not made from wood pulp until after the Civil War. This is good for historians because newspapers and letters from this time are often better preserved than documents from the early 20th century. Most documents were off-white though, no matter how hard printers tried to clean them with bleach or lime.

“Fine writing” in books was printed on laid paper, a thin, woven, lightly coated sheet similar to Resume paper. Illustrations were printed on coated paper. The facsimile equivalent of this is photo glossy paper. People would have seen major events in the Harper’s Weekly or Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. The Harper’s Weekly archives are subscription-based but the Library of Congress carries many of the same photographs for free.

Realistic marbled binding on a facsimile diary or damage to a replica letter really feels like a piece of the past. Think about what practical details are missing from an image. For example, I bound a pamplet from the Southern Historical Society with colorful marbled paper.

To get the feel right, it can be useful to stop by your local historical society or archives to handle some original documents.

Patriotic Letters

A red, white, and blue sailor raises the flag of Union, surrounded by words of wartime optimism. Decorated stationary and envelopes like this were one of the main trends of the Civil War. Facsimiles of patriotic letters help bring to life the experience of the era. One of the House Divided documentary projects features this patriotic letter.

House Divided Project

How to make a patriotic letter:

Format the page size to 5″ by 8″.

Add faint blue lines on the front and back, spaced about 3/8″ apart.

Download a patriotic cartoon image, printed in red, white, and blue.

Position an image in the upper left corner of the page.

If reproducing a handwritten letter, transcribe the text and paste the transcript on the back. Feel free to correct misspelling or illegible sections.

Writing Home Courtesy of the Delaware Historical Society

How to make a formal letter:

Format page size to 8″ by 10″.

Switch to landscape mode.

Divide into three sections, each about 3.5″ by 8″.

Add message using period appropriate font or handwriting.

Print and fold in thirds.

I printed letters on manila paper which was popular in the Civil War era. The same effect can be reached by recoloring the paper background in Microsoft Word. Go to the Design tab and select Page Color on the right of the tool bar. It may be difficult for students to read the handwriting so transcribing a letter in advance is very useful.

This post is part of a new summer 2017 “DIY” (do-it-yourself) series by House Divided Project interns Rachel Morgan and Sam Weisman on how to make various types of primary source facsimiles; see posts on CDVs, stereocards, colorized photos, and letters.

If you mention MySpace, you just dated yourself. Believe it or not, fads in social networking gave away their times just as easily 150 years ago. “Carte de visites” (CDV) were a mid-nineteenth century phenomenon like Facebook or Instagram. These portrait cards captured the nation in “cardomania”. Photography itself dates in the United States from the 1830s and 1840s, but early daguerreotypes were expensive and rare. By the late 1850s, the widespread emergence of printed photographic cards, CDVs, allowed friends and family to share their images with each other in relatively inexpensive ways. They often used the CDVs to create albums that, in effect, marked the boundaries of their social network.

This summer, I made several CDV printouts for classroom use. I found woodcut portraits and newspaper photographs to make CDVs. Then, I added some teaser introductions. When visitors enter the House Divided studio, they can pick up a CDV and find their subject in the exhibit.

I used Photoshop to make these CDVs but Microsoft Word works just as well on a budget.

A CDV can easily be adopted into a cabinet card and vise versa just by resizing and adding the photographer’s information. With some period costumes, students could even make their own CDVs or cabinet cards.

This post is part of a new summer 2017 “DIY” (do-it-yourself) series by House Divided Project interns Rachel Morgan and Sam Weisman on how to make various types of primary source facsimiles; see posts on CDVs, stereocards, colorized photos, and letters.

A Piece of History

In February of 1862, the middle of the Civil War, a black janitor posed with his cleaning tools, waiting to have his photo taken. In a time when many African Americans were fighting to acquire their basic right to freedom, this janitor sat calmly in front of the camera. In comparison to the surrounding chaos of a country collapsing in on itself, this man was composed and relaxed. This photo helps to teach us a narrative of the Civil War we sometimes forget: that of everyday life in the Civil War, especially the everyday lives of employed African Americans.

The Photographer’s Objective

The man who took this photo, Charles Francis Himes, was a Dickinson College professor and well-regarded scholar. He pursued knowledge in a variety of fields, including mathematics, foreign languages, and the natural sciences. He also had a passion for the relatively new field of photography. Although Himes was an amateur photographer, he worked diligently at learning the craft. He experimented with different chemical recipes and mediums for developing and printing photos.[1] He was trying to find a way to preserve photographs for as long as possible. As an educator, Himes also understood the importance of pursuing and passing on this knowledge. He sometimes photographed texts for his students rather than use a printing press. He also photographed some historic documents and letters that he thought were at risk of being damaged over time.[2] Himes was dedicated to preserving photographs and the lessons they had to teach.

The Stereo Card

One medium of photography that Himes utilized was the stereo card. Stereo cards consist of two identical images mounted next to each other on a piece of cardstock, usually measuring 3.5 by 7 inches. The stereo card of Henry the janitor pictured to the left is an excellent example (left). When viewed through a stereoscope, these cards produce a three-dimensional image.[3] In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, stereoscopes were common household items. Because they were mass-produced and easily obtainable, stereo cards made useful teaching tools. Himes used stereo cards to share photos of Dickinson College and Carlisle that he had taken. Many of his stereo cards are available for viewing through the Library of Congress.[4]

Stereo viewer

Instructions: How to Make a Stereo Card Facsimile

Teachers today can utilize stereo cards as a teaching tool. Acquiring a replica stereoscope is simple: they are available on EBay for as little as $10.00.

Purchase actual stereo cards to mount your facsimiles on. They can be purchased from EBay for as little as $1.75 each.

Find a stereo card image you want to recreate in your facsimile. High-quality tiff images of stereo cards can be downloaded from the Library of Congress’ website.

Make sure the image you downloaded is properly sized: 3.5 by 7 inches. This can be done with the formatting tool on Microsoft Word.

Once the images are properly sized and printed, they can be mounted onto the stereo cards you purchased.

If you do not have access to actual stereo cards, you can instead mount the images on a thick piece of cardstock or a thin piece of cardboard. Be sure to use a material that is the right thickness: a proper stereo card is about as thick as the cardboard used to make tissue boxes.

If you want to try and make a facsimile of one of Himes’ stereo cards, here are three PDF images, already properly sized for you to use. All images are courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Conclusion

Stereo card facsimiles were popular in the nineteenth century. Between 1854 and 1856 alone, the London Stereoscopic Company sold half a million cards.[5]. Because they were so easily accessible, stereo cards became important mediums in the fields of entertainment, education, and even news reporting.[6] Just as Himes and other photographers used stereo cards to spread information on those topics most important to him over a century ago, so can educators today.

In 1895, the Chicago Times-Herald launched a series of recollected accounts about Abraham Lincoln which the editors claimed would introduce new elements to the Lincoln story. These rare recollections have never since been republished as part of their own series, but modern scholars have used some of them to powerful effect. However, this summer, student interns from the House Divided Project are busy scanning, transcribing and preparing this series for free distribution on the web. Today, we are posting just one of these recollections, an account from John E. Roll, a carpenter who knew Lincoln from New Salem days and also claimed to have heard him say during the famous “House Divided” speech (June 16, 1858), that, “I used to be a slave.” This last comment has taken on some real importance in modern years, employed in various books by some leading scholars, including Michael Burlingame and Allen Guelzo, and also, most recently, by journalist Sidney Blumenthal who is using that quotation to help open his projected four-volume biography of Lincoln. The decision raises many interesting questions about historical method, but for now, we thought it would help teachers and students to see for themselves the full transcript of Roll’s original account here. What follows below appeared in the Chicago Times-Herald on August 25, 1895 (transcribed by Trevor Diamond, Class of 2017):

John E. Roll

John E. Roll is celebrated, among other things, as having assisted Abraham Lincoln in the construction of the flat boat with which the tall Kentuckian made his first trip from Salem, Ill., to New Orleans, in 1831.

“I knew him when he was 22 years old,” said Mr. Roll. “He came down here to Sangamontown and worked in the timber building a flat boat for Orfutt & Greene, who were merchants and shippers. Sangamntown was then quite a place. There were two stores, a steam saw mill and a grist-mill, a tavern and a carding mill. I have seen fifty horses hitched there of a Saturday afternoon. Now there is not a stick to mark the place. The roads are cut out, so you can’t get to it without going across the fields.

They built the boat up there because there was better timber, and were going to take it down and load at Petersburg. Charles Broadwell had a sawmill at Sangamontown, and Lincoln was there bossing the job. I came along and wanted work, and he hired me, and I made the pins for the boat. We launched here there, and she got a good deal of water in herm and we got her down as far as Salem dam, and there she was stuck, with her bow over the dam. And Lincoln bored a hole in the bottom of the boat, and let the water out. Looks like a funny way to get water out of a boat, to bore a hole in the bottom, but if the bottom is sticking out in the air, it is all right, I guess.

Lincoln was an awful clumsy looking man at that time. He wore a homespun suit of clothes, and a big pair of cowhide boots, with his trousers strapped down under them, as was the custom of that day, to keep them from crawling up his legs. And his coat was a roundabout, and when he stooped over his work we could see about four inches of his suspenders. He had on an old slouch wool hat. He was getting $15 a month from Offutt & Greene at that time.

After we got the flatboat launched we went out in the timber and found a good tree, and made a canoe. John Seaman and Walter Carman were along and they wanted to have the first ride in the canoe, and they jumped in, and the water was very high and swift and they tipped over and were in danger of drowning. The whole bottom was overflowed and there was a big elm tree standing about 100 feet from the shore, with its branches in the water, and Lincoln called to them to swim to the tree, and hold on there till we could get them. So they caught the branches, and got up in the tree. It was in March and the water was very cold. So we got a log and tied a rope to it and James Doyle got on the log and tried to get to them but the log turned over with him and he had to get in the tree with the other two.

Then we pulled the log ashore and Lincoln got straddle of it, and the rest of us paid out the rope and let him down toward the tree, and he got to them and took them off and brought them ashore.

After that he went on and loaded his boat with corn at Petersburg, and went down the river to New Orleans. I don’t know how he got back but I have an idea he walked back though he may have come back by steamboat. He worked a while for Offutt & Greene in their store at Salem, and then he bought it out, and afterward he sold it and came here to Springfield and wen to practicing law.

All the time he was running the store he had been studying law. He would walk up here to Springfield, twenty miles, and borrow books from Major Stuart and read them, and bring them back. He didn’t seem to be much of a speaker, but it seemed he could do whatever he started to do.

I had come up here to Springfield as soon as I got through the job on the flatboat and was working at the plastering trade when he moved up here. One time I remember I saw him out here on the Salem road walking along and reading one book, with another under his arm. He got tired and sat down on a log to rest. And while he rested he went on reading.

I put my money in land as fast as I made it and was worth a good deal of money. Lincoln and I were always good friends. One time Tom Lewis and I were standing and talking on the street and Tom said: ‘John, why don’t you run for some office? You’ve got so many tenants you could make them elect you.’ And I said I didn’t want no office till Abe Lincoln was elected President of the United States, and then I would expect him to give me an office because I had worked with him on the flat boat. And Lincoln came along just then—it was long before he had ever been mentioned for President, and Tom told him what I had said. And Lincoln laughed and said when hot to be President he would give me an office.

So I was the first man he ever promised an office to, but I never got it. Oh, yes I was making more money then than any office was worth. I wouldn’t have had any office. I didn’t want any.

I remember one time in a speech he made at the courthouse, that time he said the country could not live half slave and half free, he said we were all slaves one time or another, but that white men could make themselves free and the negroes could not. He said: “There is my old friend John Roll. He used to be a slave, but he made himself free, and I used to be a slave, and now I am so free that they let me practice law.’ I remember that.”

While some teachers might have heard of topic modeling technology in the context of cutting-edge digital humanities research, few have considered how these exciting new tools might find a place in the history classroom. However, a topic-modeling project offers an ideal introduction to the dynamic world of digital historical methodology. Perhaps best suited for an undergraduate setting, aspiring history majors can gain hands-on experience and useful technical skills in quantitative historical analysis. Yet while topic modeling has continued to make waves in historical research, most teachers are hesitant to include this technology in their curricula. For those more accustomed to conventional historical methodology, attempting topic modeling can be a daunting task. Even the most technologically literate teachers are left scrambling for the basics: What is topic modeling? How can these tools be used in meaningful ways? Are they teachable in already overburdened classrooms?

Topic modeling refers to a variety of programs that use complex algorithms to reduce an extremely large collection of text to a number of distinct topics. While diverse options exist for a more technologically advanced audience, the casual researcher and student should be most familiar with MALLET, an open source Java-based program that can be used without any coding knowledge through Topic Modeling Tools (TMT). There are plenty of good web-based resources for all skill levels that can help first time users get started with MALLET and TMT (like this overview of topic modeling, or this introduction to TMT).

To understand the philosophy behind topic modeling, it’s easiest to start by identifying the human function this technology is trying to mimic on a grand scale. When an individual reads through a text, they use their own critical thinking skills to identify what topics are contained in the work. For example, a student might listen to a politician’s speech and be able to articulate distinct themes in the text – the economy, the law, civil rights, etc. While some of this ability to categorize comes from the reader’s prior knowledge, the distribution of certain words is also crucial to making these connections. For example, a reader might see the words “troop,” “victory,” and “casualty” in a paragraph and come to the rational conclusion that the speaker is referring to the military. Topic modeling aims to do the same by identifying distinct subjects within enormous quantities of documents that would be impossible to read page-by-page.

When a user inputs their database of text, topic-modeling technology generates lists of words that are likely to appear in proximity to each other throughout the entirety of the collection. These lists represent topics, or “a group of words that often co-occur with each other in the same documents,” explains University of Richmond Director of Digital Sciences Robert K. Nelson. Users are left to use their own knowledge of the source-base to give meaning to these word lists and decide which categories represent legitimate themes. Once these topics are identified, the program can quantify the appearance of these categories within the body of work. For example, once having identified topic A, the program could tell you that 20% of the collection was relevant to topic A, or that Document 1 was 70% related to topic A. From these computations, researchers and students can draw conclusions about the collection of sources as a whole.

Nelson utilizes this technology in his Mining the Dispatch, one of the most noteworthy examples of topic modeling research. Working with the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond in partnership with Tufts University’s Perseus Project, Nelson analyzed the rich archives of the Richmond Daily Dispatch. Using 37 unique topics, Nelson and his research team were able to track “the dramatic and often traumatic changes as well as the sometimes surprising continuities in the social and political life of Civil War Richmond.” While it would be impossible for his research team to read through the 112,000 pieces containing nearly 24 million words, Nelson used MALLET to discover unexpected insights . Teachers looking for a good introduction of the value and limitations of topic modeling would do well to read through Nelson’s project as an example of topic modeling success. While Nelson’s introduction explains how topic modeling can both succeed and fail at the individual document level, he emphasizes how these tools are most suitable on a much larger scale. Using engaging graphics, Nelson shows the rise and fall of his topics between 1860 and 1865. Some patterns are easily explained. For example, Nelson’s discovery that fugitive slave advertisements were more likely to appear when the Union Army was near Richmond makes sense, as slaves were likely to run away in hopes of joining the northern forces. Others are less obviously correlated to outside events, such as Nelson’s discovery that slave rental advertisements sharply reduced in 1862, suggesting a destabilized market without an apparent cause. Unexpected results such as this are just as potentially significant, argues Nelson: “Topic modeling and other distant reading methods are most valuable not when they allow us to see patterns that we can easily explain but when they reveal patterns that we can’t, patterns that surprise us and that prompt interesting and useful research questions,” he explains. Mining the Dispatch should serve as an example of successful topic modeling that can demonstrate to undergraduates the utility of quantitative analysis in historical research.

Yet while Nelson sets high standards, teachers shouldn’t write off topic modeling as the domain of research professionals. My first encounter with topic modeling was as a college sophomore at the Dickinson College Digital Humanities Boot Camp. With minimal instruction, I learned quickly how to use the Stanford Topic Modeling Toolbox to create topics out of a large digitized collection of student publications from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. My research partner and I chose to generate five distinct topics, which we then labeled based on our own prior knowledge of the works. For example, one list of words was “Baby Babies Indian Care Children Water Mother Child Food Proper,” which we decided was most relevant to Reservation Life. We could then identify which works were most relevant to this topic, and how relevant this topic was to the collection as a whole. While we ended up using the topics as a taxonomy system for an online exhibit of historical photographs, the exercise of using topic modeling proved useful in and of itself by allowing us to get a better grasp of a collection much too large to read closely. Moreover, I gained a broader understanding of data-driven historical methods and how to apply digital skills to meaningful analysis.

The bottom line is that topic modeling is worth your attention. With the basic instruction, a few strong examples, and the right set of sources, topic modeling can provide an engaging and surprisingly simple lesson in the possibilities of digital humanities.

The Netflix model of customized, easy to use selection could help revitalize the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) industry, according to Jonathan Keats at Wired. Since bursting onto the education scene in 2011, MOOCs have experienced both an increase in participants and in dropouts. As low as 5% of MOOC students are actually completing the courses that they have signed up for. This is a clear frustration for professors and producers who have put so much effort into developing this new form of distance education.

Keats suggests that MOOCs focus too much on job training, writing “the rapid retreat of MOOCs into vocational banality represents a squandered opportunity.” He cites inventor Buckminster Fuller, who presented an idea that “students would gain knowledge through ‘an intercontinentally networked documentaries call-up system, operative over any home two-way TV set'” in 1961. Keats believes that Fullers original vision was not about vocational studies but “generalism, to interest people in everything, so that they could grapple with complexly interconnected global problems.” This is how the Netflix model can save MOOCs. As Keats describes “recommendation engines like those employed by Netflix and YouTube” can “entice students to compulsively take up new interests.” A streamlined system of easy to view courses that are quick and simple to follow would allow students to study topics they are interested in, regardless of skill level and availability.

A number of MOOC enthusiasts remain confident that student-oriented improvements such as the one outlined in the Wired article –or other changes yet to be realized– will inevitably emerge. Stanford professor Mitchell Stevens, for example, remains optimistic. “I’m not disappointed with MOOCs,” Stevens reports to Stanford News, “We’re still in the horse-and-buggy stage.” Stevens is not alone when thinking that MOOCs have been successful despite their growing pains. Fellow Stanford professor (and co-director of the Stanford Lytics Lab), Candace Thille, explains that at least one major advantage of the recent experiments in MOOCs is that professors can now use this new form of online pedagogy to learn a great deal more about learning. Thille and Stevens, (along with John Mitchell) argue that the key to understanding the potential of MOOCs is understanding that they are not really “college courses. “They are a new instructional genre,” claim the authors in a recent op-ed, “somewhere between a digital textbook and a successful college course.”

This insight and other innovations (like the Netflix model that Jonathan Keats has been promoting) might well combine to infuse online learning with greater staying power in the second and third stages of its revolution. By having a simple, easy to use platform with access to a wide (almost infinite) range of compact subjects, lifelong students might eventually feel empowered to learn almost as easily as they channel surf. Of course, that means that MOOCs will have to develop greater humanities content and not just remain focused on the STEM and professional development fields that have so far been enticing the largest numbers of online registrants. Also, it might mean that online “courses” will have to become shorter and much more flexible in their commitment level, and most certainly less “massive” in their aspirations. Netflix, after all, succeeds in part because it understands the needs and habits of niche viewers. It might well be the ironic consequence of the MOOC experiment, that ultimately it proves to be transformative in our approaches to individualized learning.

“Higher education is just on the edge of the crevasse,” warned Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen in 2013. Pointing to the rise of MOOCs, or Massive Online Open Courses, Christensen argued that the emerging popularity of online learning would disrupt the traditional model of classroom-based instruction. Christensen even claimed that the most established institutions would be forced to embrace a “hybrid model” of blended in-person/online education and integrate the use of MOOCs with their more specialized in-person offerings.

Yet just three years after Christensen’s sensational warnings, the pioneering spirit of democratized, open education has waned among its former believers. While some critics blame technical difficulties, copyright and intellectual property issues, or high drop out rates for the fading enthusiasm, others argue that MOOCs have yet to meet the inherent challenge of online learning. Unlike traditional classrooms, online academic experiences lack the personal interactions between professor and student and between peers that is crucial to creating a collaborative and engaging community of learning. In research investigating the social elements of online learning, educational technology specialists Whitney Kilgore and Patrick R Lowenthal argue that MOOC users often struggle with the individualistic experience of online learning: “Students regularly report feeling isolated and alone when taking online courses. This potential problem is amplified in MOOCs where there are hundreds, if not thousands, of learners,” Kilgore and Lowenthal conclude. As MOOC developers face declining interest in their products, they must address this social gap.

A recent study from Pennsylvania State University’s Saijing Zheng, Mary Beth Rosson, and John M. Carroll discusses one potential solution. Presented at the annual ACM Conference on Learning at Scale on April 26, 2016, “The Role of Social Media in MOOCs: How to Use Social Media to Enhance Student Retention” analyzes how MOOCs can utilize social media platforms such as Facebook to build community connections among online learners. Analyzing peer-to-peer interaction through the quantitative analysis of digital responses as well as a qualitative survey component among students and instructors, Zheng, Rosson and Carroll studied three MOOCs offered by Coursera. The researchers discovered that while more students were included in the Coursera-based discussion groups, the quality of interaction was much higher in the Facebook group created for course participants. Measuring the number of comments and likes/votes, the researchers concluded that students and professors were more likely to successfully find academic help and social interaction by posting or commenting in the Facebook group rather than in Coursera forums.

Students and professors participating in the study confirmed these data findings: “At the beginning of the course, I frequently asked questions on Coursera but [received] no answers. After a while, I chose to ask questions on Facebook and it worked. Actually, I like answering question on Facebook, as least I received some thanks and we can have real interactions,” reported one student, stressing that conversations on Facebook felt like a more authentic connection. Both students and professors noted that the anonymity of the Coursera forums could be problematic. Students admitted to using fake names, leading to a lack of accountability that contributed to a more negative community environment. “You cannot imagine how painful it was when I tried to look through the comments,” recalled one instructor. By forcing students to use their real names and pictures, the Facebook group for the courses fostered “very effective and meaningful discussions,” another instructor reported. Overall, participants in the Facebook group were much more likely to finish the course than participants in the Coursera forums.

The study from Zheng, Rosson, and Carroll highlights the potentially significant role of integrated social media into the MOOC experience. The successful utilization of social media as part of the online academic experience raises new questions among those invested in the success of MOOCs. Could live-tweeting classroom sessions similarly produce authentic peer-to-peer or student-to-instructor interactions? Could the features of sites such as Facebook be replicated within Coursera forums for more success in these spaces? If the use of social media can foster a sense of community comparable to traditional classroom environments, MOOC developers should take note — the MOOC revolution may depend on it.